So, Part 2 of the Zero Waste Home Sewing Experiment. If you missed part one you can check it out here.

Since my initial foray in to Zero Waste, I have been doing a lot of research and it seems like zero waste fashion/sewing strategies fall loosely into 2 categories.

The first approach – cut your regular pattern pieces conservatively and then find innovative ways to use the remaining fabric pieces to make other garments or home wares.

This is the approach I tried out in my last post and was able to use every last scrap of fabric from my sample in a meaningful way. This is what the Zero Waste brand Tonle does and their results are beyond impressive.

A quick pinterest search gives you lots of options for using up scraps, a couple of my favorites for using up every last scrap, including your serger tails, are:

This great technique from Call Ajarie for new fabric from scraps:

and…

This fantastic pouf project which would be perfect to make up and then gradually fill up with your scraps sewing it up at the end for some awesome home decor!

This is a great strategy and works well if you have the time. As a one woman show, there is just no way I could fit all this in and still get enough patterns released to make a living.

This seems to be a common theme, lots of people wanting to reduce the waste that their crafting or working makes, but not wanting/able to fit the extra steps. So scraps build up. I have 3 huge scrap bins myself.

Which brings me to the second approach – not making the scraps to start with.

The second approach is based around using the entire piece of fabric in the design, cutting the garment in such a way that there are no fabric scraps left over. This is, in theory, the perfect solution, after all, you don’t need to find time to process or otherwise deal with your scraps if there aren’t any right?

So this week I had a go at the second method, and after a few un-postable fails, came up with a cute little kids tee with a hood – my first completely Zero Waste design.

It is fair to say that I am dis-proportionally excited about having made what is essentially a t-shirt. But we have got to celebrate the small wins right??

What are your thoughts on Zero Waste for the home sewist?

If you have a go at zero waste (or even less waste) home sewing be sure to grab some pics and hashtag them #sew4bub I would love to see what you come up with!

As always, thanks for reading.

Liz xx